[cfe-dev] [llvm-dev] [RFC] Open sourcing and contributing TAPI back to the LLVM community

[John Ericson via cfe-dev]

That sounds great to me, thanks Jake. I'm not Jurgen either, of course, 
but I'm happy to assist you if he is unavailable. I'm not also not 
qualified to audit the license, but do note Apple formally also released 
some code at https://opensource.apple.com/tarballs/tapi/. If there's 
anything else I can do to help, let me know.

Cheers,

John


On 04/10/2018 06:13 PM, Jake Ehrlich wrote:
> Ideally Jurgen would cut up the code on github, put up an initial diff 
> for a minimal viable tool, and then we would review it and then 
> continue to copy code from the github repo into llvm and review it. 
> I'm also willing to do that if Jurgen doesn't want to at this point 
> though. I'd like the OK from Jurgen on that and I'd also like the OK 
> from someone that the license stuff is all good to go (I'm not sure 
> who should check licence stuff).
>
> Best,
> Jake
>
> On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 2:39 PM John Ericson 
> <john.ericson at obsidian.systems> wrote:
>
>     Seems like there are a few of us interested in this then. I new
>     around here and don't really know how decisions are made, so
>     what's next? Just open a diff with the entire library??
>
>     John
>
>     On 04/10/2018 05:33 PM, Jake Ehrlich wrote:
>>     Benifits of TBD:
>>     1) It's human readable and diffs on TBDs correspond to changes in
>>     the ABI. Diffs can be automatically added to review processes to
>>     ensure that changes to the ABI are reviewed. The TBDs also
>>     document your precise ABI.
>>     2) The size is smaller which means they can be shipped in an SDK
>>     instead of binaries to reduce the size of an SDK
>>     3) Stubs are producible from TBDs (or should be) which means
>>     stubs for linking can be produced even if we don't directly
>>     support them in LLD. This lets you ship the smaller TBD files in
>>     place of larger binaries and still link things without direct
>>     linker support (assuming you already ship a toolchain with your
>>     SDK or expect your users to have this tool)
>>
>>     Since stubs are producible from TBDs I don't really see a
>>     downside. I think we need both, I was going to propose a yaml
>>     based representation for ELF for the above reasons anyhow.
>>
>>     On Tue, Apr 10, 2018 at 1:14 PM Andrew Kelley via llvm-dev
>>     <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>>
>>         On Mon, Apr 9, 2018 at 10:11 PM, John Ericson via llvm-dev
>>         <llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>> wrote:
>>
>>             > Regardless of any of that, given that TBD files _are_ an
>>             integral part of the apple platform, supporting them is
>>             certainly a necessity in order to have a working apple
>>             linker. So, if making LLD work for Apple/MachO is the
>>             justification for adding TBD support to LLVM, that seems
>>             self-evidently a reasonable thing to do. On the other
>>             hand, it looks like the LLD mach-o code is unmaintained
>>             and nobody seems to be much interested in it. And having
>>             code for reading TBD files in LLVM seems not terribly
>>             interesting, unless it is as part of a project to make
>>             the LLD MachO linker actually functional and supported.
>>
>>             Yes. I hope this can be reason enough. Hobbyists could
>>             push for LLD support for Mach-O besides Apple, and if LLD
>>             is to displace other linkers this is a necessary
>>             component as you say. Better to upstream now before the
>>             code diverges than more work later? Conversely if nothing
>>             happens, I doubt libtapi would be a greater drag on the
>>             codebase than the MachO LLD code, so whatever
>>             cost/benefit analysis exists for keeping that around
>>             could also apply to this.
>>
>>
>>
>>         Speaking for the Zig project here, our goal is to support
>>         cross-compilation for any target, on any target, without
>>         requiring installation of any target-specific SDK. So, for
>>         example, these use cases:
>>          * on linux, compile & link a binary targeting macos
>>          * on windows, compile & link a binary targeting macos
>>
>>         This works today, although it depends on a patch to LLD to
>>         fix the MACH-O linker that is not high enough quality to
>>         upstream.
>>
>>         So we have a vested interest in improving the MACH-O linker,
>>         and in fact a Zig community member has fixed at least one bug
>>         in MACH-O LLD: reviews.llvm.org/D35387
>>         <http://reviews.llvm.org/D35387>
>>
>>         I don't fully understand how TBD or TAPI works, but I hope
>>         that it results in improvements to the MACH-O linker.
>>
>>         _______________________________________________
>>         LLVM Developers mailing list
>>         llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org <mailto:llvm-dev at lists.llvm.org>
>>         http://lists.llvm.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/llvm-dev
>>
>

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